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how can a photon be a particle and a wave?

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Originally posted by: element
Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
first of all, Jesus was God in the flesh, and he referred to himself as the son of man, not the son of God, more times in the bible than anything else.

secondly, i made a thread in HT about this a few weeks ago. go search for it...there were some good responses.
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Your thread, which I just read and was an interesting read, was about photon mass, and why a photon has momentum without mass. The short answer as I'm sure you gleaned from the responses in that thread are that mass is not a requirement for momentum. But energy is, which of course the photon has. And as you know from special relativity energy and mass are related. (to put it in laymam's terms and short without much detail, but that's the gist of it)

This thread asks other questions of the elusive photon, such as what it is interfereing with when it is zipping along by it's lonesome through a double slit.
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it is all related, though. and i dont need it in laymans terms, but thanks 😉
 
Originally posted by: element
and how about if I fire 1 photon at a time, say 1 photon per second at a double slit, on the other side, they will form an interference pattern which can be observed after like the eleventy billionth photon. But what did those photons, each passing through only once per second, interfere with?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? !!!!!!!!1111oneoneoneoneeleventybillion
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Themselves.
 
When you realize that nothing is as you think it is but only a result of what passes as your sensory organs, then you will begin to understand.
 
Welcome to physics. As my high school AP Physics teacher explained to me, physics works like this:

1) Form theory
2) Test theory
3) If theory doesn't work, make up a new theory to explain the results and return to step 2.
 
The bulb is out so this means:

No particles are coming from the mods.

The mod is not here so he cannot wave.

Since two values are positive, must raise the flag for positive NEFFERSTOM WATCH.
 
Originally posted by: sharkeeper
The bulb is out so this means:

No particles are coming from the mods.

The mod is not here so he cannot wave.

Since two values are positive, must raise the flag for positive NEFFERSTOM WATCH.
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:laugh:
 
Originally posted by: Iron Woode
Originally posted by: QuitBanningMe
Originally posted by: JeffCos
Jesus isn't God, he's the son of God.
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and at the same time God
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nope.

He sits at the right hand of God.

He was the son of God and man.

He died for your sins.
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So you don't believe in the trinity?

Oh and he died for your sins if that is what you want to believe. I don't need a middle man.
 
Originally posted by: element
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Schodinger > Element....
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Scho nuff. But you forgot the rest of the equation, not to mentions how to spell his name unless it was a typo, but I digest.

Schrodinger > element > Goosebastard

PS: I know it's digress, but I just ate. You gotta wait a half an hour before digressing.
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No need to be mean🙁
 
Originally posted by: QuitBanningMe
Originally posted by: Iron Woode
Originally posted by: QuitBanningMe
Originally posted by: JeffCos
Jesus isn't God, he's the son of God.
Click to expand...

and at the same time God
Click to expand...
nope.

He sits at the right hand of God.

He was the son of God and man.

He died for your sins.
Click to expand...
So you don't believe in the trinity?

Oh and he died for your sins if that is what you want to believe. I don't need a middle man.
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My beliefs are Roman Catholic, but I believe Jesus and God are 2 seperate things.

He died for all of mankind's sins.

PS: I am not a religious person, so try not to read too much into it.
 
Even quantum physicists struggle over that one. That doesn't mean that the photon is poorly understood by any means though as quantum mechanics is one of the best verified scientific theories in human history. It could just mean that our little brains just can't properly wrap our minds around the reality of it. We say a photon is both a particle and a wave because any experiment designed to detect the photon as a wave will detect it as a wave and any designed to detect it as a particle will likewise register it as a particle. In the double slit experiment you mentioned the photon is effectively interfering with itself. If you think of a photon as a wave this poses no mystery as a wave can travel through both slits at the same time and interfere with itself. However even stranger if you put a photon detector at the other end it measures only a single strike in one location, hence it's a particle here. One important thing to keep in mind about Quantum mechanics is that by measuring something you are usually affecting the outcome of what you are trying to measure. So another way to think about is is that until a photon interacts with something it's neither, it only exhibits wavelike or particle like properties when it interacts with something and which it exhibits depends on the interaction, or the measurement being made.

As for all the God/Jesus statements being posted, I'm an atheist and no the "mysteries" of Quantum mechanics don't make me want to believe in a God, quite the opposite really.
 
Originally posted by: Locut0s
Even quantum physicists struggle over that one. That doesn't mean that the photon is poorly understood by any means though as quantum mechanics is one of the best verified scientific theories in human history. It could just mean that our little brains just can't properly wrap our minds around the reality of it. We say a photon is both a particle and a wave because any experiment designed to detect the photon as a wave will detect it as a wave and any designed to detect it as a particle will likewise register it as a particle. In the double slit experiment you mentioned the photon is effectively interfering with itself. If you think of a photon as a wave this poses no mystery as a wave can travel through both slits at the same time and interfere with itself. However even stranger if you put a photon detector at the other end it measures only a single strike in one location, hence it's a particle here. One important thing to keep in mind about Quantum mechanics is that by measuring something you are usually affecting the outcome of what you are trying to measure. So another way to think about is is that until a photon interacts with something it's neither, it only exhibits wavelike or particle like properties when it interacts with something and which it exhibits depends on the interaction, or the measurement being made.

As for all the God/Jesus statements being posted, I'm an atheist and no the "mysteries" of Quantum mechanics don't make me want to believe in a God, quite the opposite really.
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omgwtfWINNAR?
 
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Originally posted by: element
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Schodinger > Element....
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Scho nuff. But you forgot the rest of the equation, not to mentions how to spell his name unless it was a typo, but I digest.

Schrodinger > element > Goosebastard

PS: I know it's digress, but I just ate. You gotta wait a half an hour before digressing.
Click to expand...

No need to be mean🙁
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Sorry, schrodinger likes to kill cats. assuming a cat were to be named kenny, I'd have to say "You killed kenny, you bastard!"

but it still wasn't meant to be mean.
 
Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
We made up the terms "particle" and "wave". Nature just isn't that simple.

In short, I don't know.

Oh, and I'll worry about it when I need to try to explain it to my future physics students 🙂
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best anser yet. I'd rather just masturbate than think though.
 
Yeah so I'm bumping a slightly old thread, but whatever.

The real answer is that there is no such thing as a real particle. That's just a description we made up that has some properties. Large objects like people and marbles approximate a perfect particle really well, but the truth is we do have a wavelength and travel as a wave.

So everything is a wave, and everything travels as a wave, but for large things the waves look like particles.
 
Originally posted by: DrPizza
Originally posted by: archcommus
It's not necessarily both, it BEHAVES as both. We don't know what it really is.
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bingo.
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Photons are described perfectly (AFAIK) by a wavefunction. For a "particle" like the photon, your wavefunction is just a gaussian wave packet that looks like a particle sometimes, and becomes more particle-like as you increase the energy.
 
particles are energy, enegry is waves, IIRC, partciles have a frequency too. Just because it isn't intuitive doesn't mean it is nonsensical.
 
The wave particle duality was resolved many years ago, I forget by whom. Basicaly a photon is a discrete wave, looks something like

.......iiiiiii|||||||||iiiiiiii......

Because it is a wave it has the properties of a wave.
Because it is discrete (ie. limited length), it also has the properties of a particle.

/thread
 
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